“I read about that,” Goncalves said. “The English kicked the shit out of the Argentineans, right?”
“The English did,” Arnaldo said.
“So that shut your brother-in-law up, I suppose. Come on. Let’s go in there and talk to those people.”
He unfastened his seat belt and opened the door of the car.
“Shut it,” Arnaldo said.
“What?”
“Shut the door. I’m not finished. I’m not telling this story because I enjoy the sound of my voice. I’m telling it for your edification.”
“I didn’t know you knew words like edification.”
“You don’t know a lot of things. Listen and learn.”
“Learn what?”
“About Argentineans.”
“What’s to learn?”
“What’s to learn is why it’s a waste of time being here.”
“I thought the Chief Inspector-”
“Mario doesn’t have any more faith in this little excursion than I do. We’re here because Sampaio wanted us here. Can I go on with the story?”
“Now I’m intrigued. Please do.”
“A couple of weeks after the Argentineans invaded, I’m sitting in that building over there, with my wife, and my sister, and my Argentinean brother-in-law. He’s all puffed up about the great victory to come. I try to point out this is the English he’s talking about, and that there’s a whole damned fleet on the way. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘We’re gonna kick their asses,’ he says.”
“He really thought that?”
“He really did. Oh, he had all sorts of reasons, like long lines of supply, and how the Argentinean Air Force was topnotch, and how they had all these Exocet missiles they bought from the French, and how they were going to use them to sink the entire English fleet, but the point is he believed it.”
“And the point of this whole diatribe of yours?”
“This: most Argentineans, not all, but most, have a superiority complex. They always think they’re better than other people, they always think they’re going to win, and they keep on thinking that way right up to the moment they get the shit kicked out of them.”
“That’s crap. You can’t make generalizations like that about an entire people. You, Arnaldo, are a bigot.”
“Am I?”
“Wait. Let me think about where you’re going with this.”
“Go ahead. Think.”
“How’s this? You believe they wouldn’t bother to kidnap Senhora Santos to put the Artist’s game off because they’ve got it in their heads they’re going to win anyway? With or without the Artist playing for our side?”
“Bingo.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. It’s beyond all reason. The Artist can run circles around Dieguito Falabella, and he’s the best man they’ve got.”
“You know that, and I know that. But those people in there don’t know that.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Let’s go see. This time of the day, they’ll all be in the bar.”
The bar of the Clube Argentino de Sao Paulo was a dim, wood-paneled room, devoid of windows, and lit by recessed lights in the ceiling. The walls were lined with photos, mostly in black-and-white. The men in the photos were playing football and dressed in striped jerseys. In the photos that had been printed in color, the stripes were sky blue and white.
Arnaldo, leading the way into the room, came to a standstill so quickly that Goncalves bumped into his back.
“Hey,” Goncalves said. “What-”
“You see the guy with the big moustache?”
“The one with a bald spot and the number ten on the back of his football jersey?”
“Him. That’s Federico Lorca.”
“Your ex-brother-in-law?”
“The very one.”
Lorca, an overweight man pushing sixty, was nursing a glass of wine and swiveling his head first one way, then the other, as he held forth to the people along the length of the bar. At a given point, one of them tried to break-in on his monologue, but Lorca wouldn’t have it. He raised his voice and talked right over him.
“What a windbag,” Goncalves said.
“You have no idea,” Arnaldo said. “Come on. Let’s get this waste of time over with.”
He walked over to Lorca and tapped him on the shoulder. Lorca turned, looked at Arnaldo, and rocked back on his heels.
“Ha,” he said. “Still alive? I was hoping you were dead.”
“Still shooting off that big mouth of yours, are you, Federico?”
“You’ve got it wrong. As usual. What I’m doing is having a conversation with friends. But you wouldn’t know about friends, would you? I seem to recall you never had any. What are you doing in our club?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Federal Police business.”
“If you lived in Argentina, and worked for our federal cops, they would have fired you a long time ago.”
“If I lived in Argentina, and worked anywhere, I would have killed myself a long time ago.”
The Argentineans within earshot didn’t appreciate the remark. There was some grumbling.
“One of the best things I ever did,” Lorca said, “was to divorce Alicia.”
“Watch out what you say about my sister, Federico.”
“I wasn’t really referring to your sister, Arnaldo. I was referring to getting rid of you as a brother-in-law. The day the divorce became final was one of the happiest days of my life.”
“Mine too. So, finally, we’ve got one thing we agree on. I can’t think of anything in this life that I ever wished for more.”
Lorca took a sip of his wine. “You’re starting to bore me. How about you get down to that Federal Police business of yours?”
“My young colleague here has some questions for you and your friends.”
Goncalves stepped in. “About the kidnapping of Tico Santos’s mother.”
“What about it?”
“From what I understand, the Argentinean newspapers are crying crocodile tears.”
“Crocodile tears?”
“Yeah. They’re saying it’s a terrible thing, but they don’t really mean it.”
Lorca smiled a thin smile. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. So how do you people feel about it? Do you ascribe to the official line? Or are you kind of happy to see the Artist with his mind off of the game?”
Federico Lorca looked around him, as if he was taking a visual poll. Then he looked back at Goncalves.
“We all live here in Brazil. We’ve got a different take on it.”
“Which is?”
“We’re annoyed.”
“Annoyed?”
“It’s like this: if Tico doesn’t play, or if he plays badly when we win, people could say it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been in top form.”
A red flush crept up Goncalves’s neck and suffused his face.
“ When you win. Did you say when you win?”
“I did.”
“And you really think that’s going to happen?”
“I do.”
Arnaldo dug Goncalves in the ribs. “See what I mean?” he said.
Goncalves ignored him. “And yet, if Tico doesn’t play, it would bother you?”
The Argentinean smiled. “Of course it would. It would diminish our triumph. Back home, our countrymen don’t have daily contact with Brazilians. Those of us who live here do. And we’ll get to rub our victory in your faces every day for the next four years.”
“We were discussing the issue just before you guys came in,” one of the other Argentineans said. “Somebody suggested a Brazilian did it.”
“That somebody was you, Jose,” one of the other men said.
“Okay, so it was me,” Jose said. “But it’s possible, isn’t it?”
There was a general murmur of approval.
“Wait a minute, wait just a minute,” Goncalves said. “Are you telling me you people actually believe we’d kidnap the mother of our own best striker just to diminish the prestige of an unlikely Argentinean victory?”
“Who says it’s unlikely?” one of the other men said.
“ I said it’s unlikely,” Goncalves said, his voice taking on an edge.
“Of course you did,” the Argentinean said. “You’re Brazilian, and therefore deluded about the outcome.”
“Deluded?” Goncalves sputtered.